Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (5 page)

Silverstein was genial and relaxed. He
stretched the conversation out a little, discussing irrelevancies, but finally,
over a brandy, offered David the position in London. David was delighted–
$20,000 a year and the chance to be involved with a company which obviously had
such exciting potential. He did not hesitate to agree to start working in London
on January first.

A week later he flew to Santa Barbara on the
West Coast of America for a rare holiday with his uncle. The offshore oil rigs
rise there from the limpid Pacific in a cluster. Most tourists think they spoil
the view, and most locals detest them, recalling the disastrous Union Oil of
California blowup of January 1969, when 12,000 barrels had gone up in a pillar
of fire that burned and smoked for days and left an 800-mile oil slick to kill
the wildlife and ruin the local tourist industry. But David liked the rigs.
That thrusting technology was part of him now that he was an oilman. After
three weeks of swimming and sunbathing, he was ready for his new career, and
looking forward to starting his government training course.

David enjoyed his introduction to oil, which
taught him an immense amount about the
industry,
although he was a little disconcerted that nobody else on the government course
seemed to have heard of Discovery Oil. But after eight weeks he had educated
most of them. He spent Christmas with his parents in Manhattan and was well
ready to fly to England on December 28 to take up his post in London.

David Kesler had never been to England: how
green the grass was, how narrow the roads, how closed in by hedges and fences
the houses. He felt he was in Toy Town after the vast highways and large
automobiles of New York. The small flat in the Barbican was clean and
impersonal, but, as Mr. Cooper had said, convenient for his office a few
hundred yards away in Threadneedle Street.

David spent the weekend recovering from the
flight and change of circadian rhythm, and turned up briskly for his first day
at the offices of Discovery Oil on Tuesday, January 2.

The small building in Threadneedle Street
consisted of seven rooms, of which only Silverstein’s had a prestigious air
about it. There was a tiny reception area, a telex room, two rooms for
secretaries, a room for Mr. Elliott and another for himself. It seemed very
pokey to David, but as Silverstein was quick to point out, office rent in the
City of London was fifteen pounds a square foot compared with two pounds in New
York.

Bernie Silverstein’s secretary, Judith
Lampson, ushered him through to the well-appointed office of the chief
executive. Silverstein sat in a large black swivel chair behind a massive desk,
which made him look like a midget. By his side were positioned the telephones–three
white and one red. David was later to learn that the important-looking red
telephone was directly connected to a number in the States, but he was never
quite sure to whom.

“Good morning, Mr. Silverstein. Where would
you like me to start?”

“Bernie, please call me Bernie. Take a seat.”
He pushed a telex across the table. “Read that. They have just finished
drilling in the North Sea. I want you to go to Aberdeen and write a full report
on it. Try and find out what the other companies are up to while you are there.
You should find that course you did with the government very useful. I’m sorry
to send you away when you have only just arrived in London, before you have
even had a chance to settle in.”

“I don’t mind,” replied David.
“Happy to get on with it.”
He left Silverstein’s office and
spent the rest of the day with his new secretary, Rosemary Rentoul (whom he
shared with Richard Elliott), arranging his trip to Aberdeen and collecting
some necessary background material.

David flew by Trident to Aberdeen the next
morning, booked in at the Royal Hotel and then made contact with Mark Stewart,
the Discovery Oil man on site. During the next ten days, he gathered all the
information that Silverstein had asked for, both from Discovery Oil and the
other companies involved in the area. Discovery Oil had only a few employees,
and hardly any of them seemed to know in much detail what the company was up
to. Mark Stewart explained that almost everybody was on contract work, and they
only needed a large work force when they were involved in an actual drilling
operation.

During David’s stay in Aberdeen, they took a
helicopter out to the rig, which was equally deserted. The grey waves lapped
round it and the bitter wind blew through it. It seemed eerie to David, as if
it had rarely been occupied or used. There was, however, a heavy smell of
sulphur and hydrocarbons in the air. David liked that: he remembered how they
told them at the government course that when a strike had been made the smell
was worse than a garbage dump.

When he arrived in the London office on the
following Monday morning armed with his report, he immediately took it to
Silverstein. David had spent considerable time and trouble compiling an
efficient brief for his new boss, was rather pleased with the results and
expected some appreciation. But Silverstein seemed to have other things on his
mind, and invited David to lunch with him at Le Poulbot. It was there that
David discovered what was preoccupying him. When they had settled at their
table downstairs in the Cheapside restaurant, Silverstein ventured, “Notice the
change in the price of the shares?”

“Oh yes,” enthused David, “up fifty cents to
nearly six dollars. I suppose it is because of our new bank backing and the
other companies’ successful strikes?”

“No,” said Silverstein in a low tone
designed to leave the impression that no one else must hear this part of the
conversation. “The truth is that we have made a big strike ourselves, but we
have not yet decided when to announce it.”

David whistled under his breath: no wonder
they were playing it so cool in Scotland. No wonder the air on the Discovery
Oil rig was redolent with sulphur.

“What are the company’s plans at the moment?”

“We will announce it,” said Silverstein
quietly, picking at his bread roll as he talked, “in about three weeks’ time,
when we are certain of the full extent and capacity of the hole. We want to make
some plans for coping with the publicity and the sudden inflow of money. The
shares will go through the roof, of course.”

“Some people must already know as the shares
have climbed so steadily. Is there any harm in getting in on the act?” asked
David.

“No, as long as it doesn’t
harm the company in any way.
Just let me know if anyone wants to invest. We don’t have the problems
of inside information in England–none of the restrictive laws we have in
America.”

Back in the office, David carefully read the
geologist’s report that Silverstein had given him: it certainly seemed as if
Discovery Oil had made a successful strike, although the extent of the find was
not as yet entirely certain. When he had completed the report, he glanced at
his watch and cursed. The geologist’s file had totally preoccupied him and now
he feared he was going to be late for his dinner in Oxford that night with an
old classmate from Harvard. He threw the report into his brief case and took a
taxi to Paddington Station, only just making the six-fifteen.

On the train down to the
university
city
he thought about Stephen Bradley, who had been a close friend in
his Harvard days and had helped so many students, like David, in the
mathematics class that year. Stephen was now a visiting Fellow at Magdalen
College and was undoubtedly the most brilliant scholar of his generation. He
had won the Kennedy Memorial Scholarship to Harvard and later, in 1970, the
Wister Prize for Mathematics, the most sought-after award in the mathematical
faculty. Although in monetary terms this award was a derisory eighty dollars
and a medal, it was the reputation and offers that came after that made the
competition so keen. Stephen had won it with consummate ease and nobody was
surprised when he was successful in his application for a fellowship at Oxford.
He was now in his third year at Magdalen. Papers by Bradley on Boolean algebra
appeared at short intervals in the
Proceedings
of the London Mathematical Society.
He was prodigiously clever, and had
just been appointed to a chair in mathematics back at his alma mater, Harvard.

David was very fond of his brilliant friend
and looked forward to seeing Stephen again, to catch up with his latest work
and successes, although he realised he would have to prise the information out
of him. So often it is the truly brilliant who have a tendency to remain silent
because they know too much rather than too little.

The six-fifteen from Paddington arrived in
Oxford at seven-fifteen, and the short taxi ride from the station, past
Worcester College and down New College Lane, brought David to Magdalen at
seven-thirty. He was sorry that the dark evening prevented him seeing more
clearly the magnificence of the individual colleges, which, in a group, make up
the university.

One of the college porters escorted David to
Stephen’s rooms, which were spacious and ancient, and comfortably cluttered
with books, cushions and prints. How unlike the antiseptic walls of Harvard,
thought David. Stephen was there to greet him. He didn’t seem to have changed
an iota. His tall, thin, ungainly
body made any suit look
as if it was hanging on him; no tailor would ever have employed him to be a
dummy. His heavy eyebrows protruded over his out-of-date round-rimmed
spectacles, which he almost seemed to hide behind in his shyness. He ambled up
to David to welcome him, one minute an old man, the next younger than his
thirty years. Stephen poured David a Jack Daniels and they settled down to
chat. Although Stephen had never looked upon David as a real friend at Harvard,
he had enjoyed coaching a fellow student so eager to learn and anyway, he
always welcomed any excuse to entertain Americans at Oxford.

“It has been a memorable three years, David.
The only sad event has been the death of my father last year,” said Stephen. “He
took such an interest in my progress and gave my academic work so much support.
I do miss him.

“He’s left me rather well off, actually...
David, you’re the bright boy in business. Whatever can I do with a bequest of
$250,000, which is just sitting on deposit with the bank? I never seem to have
the time to do anything about it, and when it comes to investments I haven’t a
clue where to begin.”

That started David off about his exacting
new job with Discovery

“Why don’t you invest your money in my
company, Stephen? We’ve had a fantastic strike in the North Sea, and when we
announce it the shares are going to go through the roof. The whole operation
would only take a month or so. You will make the killing of a lifetime. I only
wish I had money to put into it.”

“Have you the full details of the strike?”
enquired Stephen.

“No, but I have the
geologist’s report, and that makes pretty good reading.
The problem is that the shares are already
going up fast and although I am convinced they will reach twenty dollars, there
is little time to waste.”

Stephen glanced at the geologist’s report,
thinking he would study it carefully later.

“How does one go about an investment of this
sort?” he enquired.

“Well, you find yourself a respectable
stockbroker, buy as many shares as you can afford and then await the
announcement of the strike. I’ll keep you informed on how things are going and
advise you when I feel it’s the best time to sell.”

“That would be extremely thoughtful of you,
David.”

“It’s the least I can do after all the help
you gave me with math at Harvard.”

“Oh, that was nothing. Let’s go and have
some dinner.”

Stephen led David to the college dining
hall, an oblong, oak-panelled room covered in pictures of past presidents of
Magdalen, bishops and academics. The long wooden tables on which the
undergraduates were eating filled the body of the hall, but Stephen shuffled up
to the High Table and proffered David a comfortable seat. The undergraduates
were a noisy, enthusiastic bunch–Stephen didn’t notice them though David was
enjoying the new experience.

The meal was formidable and David wondered
how Stephen kept so thin with such daily temptations (seven courses are not
unusual at Magdalen High Table). When they reached the port Stephen suggested
they return to his rooms rather than join the crusty old dons in the Senior
Common Room.

Late into the night, over the rubicund
Magdalen port, they talked about North Sea oil and Boolean algebra, each
admiring the other for the mastery of his subject. Stephen, like most
academics, was fairly credulous outside the bounds of his own discipline. He
began to think that an investment in Discovery Oil would be a very astute move
on his part.

In the morning, they strolled in the famous
Addison’s walk near Magdalen, where the grass grows green and lush by the
Cherwell. Reluctantly, David caught the 11 A.M. train back to London. He had
enjoyed his stay at Oxford and hoped he had been able to help his old Harvard
friend, who in the past had done so much for him.

“Good morning, David.”